Subscription

The deal, first reported last week, comes with a two-year Xbox Live membership and will cost consumers a total of $458.76. A 4GB Xbox 360 with Kinect and two years of Xbox Live currently costs $380.18 on Amazon US. More >

The survey, completed by an IGN reader, presents a range of possible PlayStation Plus plans and asks the customer to choose the one that appeals the most. It then applies further tweaks in a bid to home in on the user's ideal Plus package. More >

A new Vita system update, version 1.66, has been released, and it fixes an issue preventing members of the PlayStation Plus service from playing Minis given away with their subscriptions on Sony's new handheld. More >

Recent declines in sales of new games at US retail have portrayed a market in decline, but new figures released by NPD Group today go some way to disproving that theory. The market research firm estimates total US spend on second-hand games, rentals, subscriptions, full-game downloads, DLC, and mobile and social games in the final three months of 2011 came to $2.04 billion. More >

Blizzard Entertainment says it is "really happy" with the monthly subscription model despite falling numbers of World Of Warcraft subscribers amid the meteoric rise of free-to-play. Speaking to our friends at PC Gamer, WOW producer John Lagrave insisted that Blizzard had no intention of switching its flagship MMOG to the freemium model, under which games are free-to-play and revenue comes from sales of virtual goods. More >

Members of the PlayStation Plus subscription service will be able to buy Journey a week before its official release. A post on the PlayStation Blog confirms that Plus members will be able to download Thatgamecompany's striking adventure from Wednesday, March 7 - a full week before the game is officially released. More >

Sony has acknowledged an issue preventing members of the PlayStation Plus subscription service from playing minis on PS Vita. More >

Cryptic Studios' MMOG Star Trek Online will offer a free-to-play option, alongside its existing subscription model, from January 17. The new system, explained at the source link below, will see those paying a monthly subscription fee renamed Gold members, with those playing for free given Silver accounts with fewer features. More >

Square Enix's online PC RPG Final Fantasy XIV will require a subscription fee from January 6, more than a year after the publisher made the game free to play by way of apology for the miserable state in which the game launched. Andriasang reports that the 30 and 90-day fees of ¥980 and ¥2,640 will be reduced, to ¥680 and ¥1,740 respectively, until Square Enix has finished and launched version 2.0 of the game. More >

Electronic Arts has launched the T-Club, an "elite Tetris fan club", alongside a new version of Alexey Pajitnov's classic puzzler which hits the iOS App Store today. This latest version of Tetris sports touch controls, new game modes, and regularly delivered challenges through the Tetris Log. It also tracks players' total lines cleared to calculate their Tetris Rank. More >

Sony has announced The 12 Gifts Of Christmas, a promotion which will see 12 free games given away to members of the PlayStation Plus subscription service. It kicks off today with a free download of Sonic The Hedgehog 2, which will only be available until December 3, after which it will be replaced by the next game in the promotion. More >

Activision Blizzard CEO Bobby Kotick has questioned whether BioWare's upcoming Star Wars MMOG The Old Republic will make any money for publisher EA. More >

Big Fish Games has announced an OnLive-alike game streaming service for the iPad after securing Apple's approval to use App Store subscriptions for videogames. Bloomberg reports that the Seattle-based casual gaming company will offer users instant access to its library of games from iPad for $4.99 a month, rising to $6.99 next year when more games are added. More >

Call Of Duty: Elite, the stat-tracking service that launched alongside Modern Warfare 3 on November 8, amassed a million paid members in just six days, Activision has announced. In a press release, the publisher claims that more than four million have signed up for the service, which is available for free with a premium version, costing £34.99 per year, offering extra features and video content. More >

Activision has "immediately and automatically" extended all Call Of Duty: Elite subscriptions by 30 days as it continues to struggle to cope with demand following the social service's launch alongside Modern Warfare 3 on Tuesday. More >

Market research firm Newzoo has shown in a new report that the free-to-play MMOG model is increasing in popularity around the world. In the US, free-to-play will account for 47 per cent of the $2.6 billion Newzoo predicts will be spent on MMOGs. Last year, that figure was just 39 per cent. More >

Activision has released a positive set of financial results for the three months to September 30, beating internal forecasts with sales and profits up thanks to a rise in digital revenue. More >

Call Of Duty Elite, the social stat-tracking service which launched alongside Modern Warfare 3 last night, is buckling under the weight of demand. Overnight, several Twitter udpates confirmed that the COD Elite team was aware of, and working to fix, problems brought on by the rush of new signups following Modern Warfare 3's launch. More >